Educators Evaluate ‘Flipped Classrooms’

In this article Katie Ash gets stories of teachers who are using a new approach to teaching called the “flipped classroom.” This is where teachers using videos, that can be sent home or played in class, to do most of the lecturing. This leaves the time in class to help students do hands-on activities and one-on-one work from teacher to student. Some teachers think that this is not an innovative way to engages students into learning more though, they believe that this is just a newer way of still using a lecture approach. The lecture is just at home and not in the classroom this time. One teacher uses the videos as a final aid for students. He first uses a guided inquiry method of teaching, then gets the students to complete lab work, and finally after then have learned all they can on their own he will introduce the video. Another way teachers are changing from a traditional classroom setting is by using a “mastery based” flipped classroom. This means that rather than students learning everything at once, they will be going through materials at their own pace. They watch the video, complete quizzes, perform labs, and even take tests when they are ready as opposed to with the entire class. These “flipped classrooms” are really just methods teachers are trying to use so that students who are not engaging in the classroom have a better chance of not being left behind. In the article one of the teachers interviewed stated, “It’s not going to make a bad teacher a good teacher.” Meaning that if a teacher thinks that flipping their classroom will make them automatically better is wrong, this is just another aid for them to use.